A second judge in the Apple versus Epic Games lawsuit has implied that the tech giant lied to the court, reports AppleInsider.
It comes after the original judge strongly implied that Apple had not told the truth about the reasons for its new App Store policy. On Friday Judge Thomas Hixon denied Apple’’s request for more time to produce 1.3 million documents related to App Store changes it made in January to comply with a 2021 court order.
“Before yesterday’s report Apple never previewed to Epic Games or to the Court that the number of documents it would need to review exceeded its prior estimate by a substantial amount,” Hixon said. “This information would have been apparent to Apple weeks ago. It is simply not believable that Apple learned of this information only in the two weeks following the last status report. This gives rise to several related concerns. First, Apple’s status reports weren’t any good.”
This is all part of an ongoing global legal battle between Apple and Epic. On Aug. 13, 2020, Epic Games announced that it had introduced a new direct payment option in the Fortnite app for iPhone and iPad, allowing players to purchase 1000 V-Bucks for US$7.99 rather than $9.99 through Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism. Shortly thereafter, Apple removed the gamer from the App Store for violating store polices and followed up by shutting down the company’s developer account.
Epic immediately filed a lawsuit against Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.In September 2020 Apple filed a countersuit to stop the game maker from using its own payment system for Fortnite. Apple also accused Epic of theft and sought extra monetary damages beyond breach of contract.
The legal battle has bounced back and forth with lawsuits and counter-lawsuits ever since.
Article provided with permission from AppleWorld.Today
